I'm really not sure what to make of Saints Row 3. True, it brings back a lot of what made SR2 awesome. But it misses out on so much stuff, and it seems to take some huge steps backwards in certain aspects.
Now, this is going to sound like some crazy flaming. Keep in mind, I actually
do kinda like the game. But it's nowhere near the slam dunk "pinnacle of the GTA genre" that I (and Yahtzee, apparently) think Saints Row 2 was.
So, here's what I think is wrong with it:
The game starts with a crazy set of missions and a massive climactic airplane thing. Big mistake. It makes everything after that just seem watered down.
The story feels really unfocused. At first I thought it was the non-linear mission selection, but that's BS, since SR2 did that and they did it just fine. No, I think it's partly due to the anticlimax (see above), and partly because you're picking your missions by
people rather than by
target gang. Sure, you get a feel for who's responsible for what, but sometimes they even mix that around, apparently just to mess with you. So you don't even know what you're going to be accomplishing until you start it.
There's also the difference in how you take over neighbourhoods. SR2 had you slowly taking over the city, bit by bit, with every story mission. You got access to new stuff, a new place you could drive around in relative peace, and you really felt like you were conquering the place. SR3 just bumps up the percentage figure by a few notches, which is perhaps the most boring city takeover system you could possibly come up with.
The city itself is nowhere near as interesting as SR2's city. It feels tiny, and most of the areas feel exactly the same as all the other areas. The freeway is just a short straight section rather than the giant loop in SR2, and traffic feels really sparse almost everywhere. The "international" airport just feels like a little run-down airstrip.
Most of the plot missions are just diversions dressed up as missions. That is, plot mission
x is just the first level of activity
y, and once you complete it, it lets you know that you can do more of that later if you like. Minigames don't make very good plot missions, and a lot of them seem to be very sloppily integrated with the plot (a la "why am I doing this again?"). But, most importantly, anyone who's played a lot of SR2 has already done every last one of these, so the main plot ends up being a
massive rehash of the original game's activities (on "super easy" mode).
The missions themselves are
horribly scripted. A bunch of examples:
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Game: "Get to the broadcast towers! I got you a chopper, but I parked it many blocks away."
Me: "Okay, sure, whatever, I'll just phone up my own attack chopper, it's way better than the one you'll giv--"
Game: "NO YOU MUST USE OUR CHOPPER AND I WON'T PROGRESS THE MISSION UNTIL YOU DO."
Me: "Uh, okay, I'll take my chopper to your chopper, get in your chopper, get back out, take my chopp--"
Game: "NO GET BACK IN WITHIN TWO MINUTES OR I FAIL THE MISSION."
Me: "... WTF?"
(yes, their chopper had some special laser thing, but they could have
told me that instead of "two minutes to failsville")
Protagonist: "You want to listen to some music?"
Kinzie: "No, I'm good."
Me: "... but we've been listening to music the whole way. Or was I supposed to take the car you gave me instead of my own beefed up cop car? And not notice the radio was turned off?"
Kinzie: "MIND KEEPING IT DOWN OUT THERE?"
Me: "Uh, everyone's dead, nobody new is showing up, and I've been standing here checking all my weapons for the past several minutes while you hack. Maybe you should get your hearing checked?"
Game: "GET TO THE GROUND LEVEL AND RESCUE PIERCE!"
Me: "No, I'm pretty sure I could do a better job up here. I mean, I have a rocket launcher, a sniper rifle, a +1 Crate of Infinite Ammo, and a clear view of the entire plaza."
Game: "NO GET DOWN THERE OR I WON'T ADVANCE THE MISSION."
Me: "Sigh. Fine. I've run to Pierce, who is completely fine and doesn't really need escorting at all, because everyone is dead. In fact, he already ran down into our garage, and he could've just taken the elevator. Now what?"
Game: "RUN BACK TO THE BUILDING."
Me: "..."
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At one point, we were being attacked on all sides by a bunch of snipers. I already had a sniper rifle of my own, so naturally, I was busy taking them all out. Having done this, I look to see what my next objective is ... and it's to go to my room and pick up a sniper rifle to deal with the snipers. Sigh. Inventory detection, much?
Why can't I use my garage or a Rim Jobs when I'm on a mission? I can phone up the Vehicle Delivery number just fine. Or cancel the mission, go to a garage, grab a car, restart the mission, and pick up the car I just retrieved. Assuming it wasn't in the way of some mission car and got despawned.
The cops supposedly destroyed one of our safehouses. Where does the mission put me afterwards? In the lobby of our safehouse building. What do I see when I take the elevator up to the safehouse? The whole place, exactly as we left it, as if nothing had ever happened.
The property system seems nifty at first, but it's really just exponential profit -- 10% "interest" (reinvestment) every game hour. Soon you've purchased everything and you're making 40k a pop. Pick up a couple safehouses, and your transfer limit is over 150k. You can pretty much just AFK at that point and make more money than you'll ever need. And the fact that you can buy a bunch of respect for cash makes that cheap, too. (A game mechanic that encourages you to
not play for a while?)
Having an "allowance" makes upgrades boring. "Oh, another 80k came in while I was on that mission. Are there any upgrades I
don't have? Reduced notoriety for a gang I've already pretty much destroyed? Ammo for a weapon I don't use? Guess I'll just put the rest into respect. Yawn."
The diversions are pretty much pointless. Aside from the achievement and a little cash + respect, there's no point in doing them at all. They're just the SR2 diversions, rehashed and watered down down -- I finished all the "Insurance Fraud" missions around the time I was wondering when they would actually get hard.
There's a huge shift in focus here. In SR2, diversions were something that helped you with the main mission. They were increasingly difficult challenges with increasing cash and respect rewards, culminating in some super-bonus if you finished the highest level. In SR3, diversions are basically filler material. The main storyline and the upgrade system give you all the bonuses, and you make more from city earnings than you possibly could from diversions anyway.
That's on top of the fact that there's maybe two new diversions, and at least two missing SR2 ones (probably a lot more I've forgotten).
They have an upgrade (and a plot mission reward) that lets you auto-finish an entire neighbourhood. That's basically a "push here to win" button. When does that
ever make sense? It also shows how useless the diversions are, when you can basically just mark them as done without ever going near them.
Oh, and they completely wrecked Shaundi's character. She's totally unrecognisable now, and a lot less fun and cool. The charitable conclusion would be that they couldn't get her voice actress to come back, and the new one couldn't do her properly, so they had to change her character to match. The less charitable conclusion would be that someone decided she didn't appeal enough to the audience (read: "not sexy enough") or was too hard to write for (did their original writers leave?).
Unfortunately, the rumour that her voice actress wasn't even
asked to return seems to support the latter. Honestly (EARLY SPOILERS HERE), they should have sacrificed
her in the opening scene rather than Johnny, who I think still had a lot of life left in him.
I could almost certainly go on, but I think that's probably enough.
Ultimately, I can't tell whether SR3 was rushed, badly designed, or was just listening to the wrong users / game testers. "Ohhh, don't give us challenging activities like SR2! Those got sooOOOoo hard by the end! Don't make them important, I don't want to miss out on any bonuses because I can't manage to finish them all! Also, ditch the stoner girl, give me a sexy girl with a violent but otherwise bland personality!"
The final verdict? Had I known what SR3 was going to be, I would not have bought it full price. It feels like a mediocre expansion pack for SR2, especially since it doesn't seem like there's been any engine improvements at all. If there's one thing they did absolutely perfectly, it's marketing. They had me completely fooled.
And yes, I fully expect Yahtzee to rip this a new one. And really, I think that's completely justified.
